The high school has suspended the teenager for three days. His father says the news and support he’s received from the online community has been overwhelming, but will benefit him in the future.

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The father of a 14-year-old Texas high school student is up in arms after police led his son out of school in handcuffs when teachers complained about a “hoax bomb” that turned out to be, ahem, a homemade clock, according to the The Dallas Morning News.

Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman at McArthur High School in Irving, Texas, whose hobby is inventing, had hoped to impress his teachers on Monday when he brought a homemade clock in the form of a circuit-stuffed pencil-case, but found himself in police custody, the report says.

Ahmed told the Dallas paper that he felt particularly conscious of his Muslim heritage during police questioning, saying they asked him if he “tried to make a bomb,” although he repeatedly explained it was a clock.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is concerned about “Islamophobia,” writes the outlet.

Ahmed’s clock was hardly his most elaborate creation. He said he threw it together in about 20 minutes before bedtime on Sunday: a circuit board and power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front.

He showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn’t get quite the reaction he’d hoped for.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Ahmed said. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

The teen was suspended for three days and police and school officials have not commented on the matter. But his father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated to the U.S. from Sudan, told the news outlet that he believes his son was mistreated because of Islamophobia.

And with the national climate of intolerance in this nation, his claim isn’t far-fetched. Do you think the incident was sparked by a case of Islamophobia? Sound off below…